Sunday, March 20, 2016

Versailles on the Potomac

Conservatives outside Washington have for eight years felt the pain of the rise and governance of an elitist communist -- excuse me "community organizer" -- as president of the United States, We lashed out at liberals.

What about the Conservative Commentariat? Why are we not getting angry at the churlish Charles Krauthammer. He has spent the last 30 years sneering at us, even as he pretends to be a conservative.Remember this gem from September 24, 2010: "When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories. I am not privy to the Democrats' private prayers, but I do hear the stories they're telling themselves. The new meme is that there's a civil war raging in the Republican Party. The Tea Party will wreck it from within and prove to be the Democrats' salvation."

That's right, he blamed the Tea Party -- which rose and gave Republicans a historic win in the House -- for the loss of the Senate.

But the Republican Establishment abandoned Sharron Angle, John Raese and Christine O'Donnell in favor of their Democratic buddies. Had Republicans backed those three, the Senate would have been tied at 50, and Republicans could easily have flipped a Democrat to win control of the Senate.

Krauthammer is not our friend.

He has been in Washington too long. Ditto George Will, Bill Kristol and most of the Fox News All-Stars.

Washington is Versailles, the French Palace and symbol of the absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime that ruled France before the French Revolution.

Everyone beats up on Washington, but most of the people I know who live here love it. Of course they do. It’s beautiful, the people are friendly, we’ve got good restaurants, not to mention full employment and construction cranes on virtually every corner. If you work on Capitol Hill or downtown, it’s hard to walk back from lunch without seeing someone you know. It’s a warm bath. Nobody wants to leave.

But let’s pretend for a second this isn’t Washington. Let’s imagine it’s the capital of an African country, say Burkina Faso, and we are doing a study on corruption. Probably the first question we’d ask: How many government officials have close relatives who make a living by influencing government spending? A huge percentage of them? OK. Case closed. Ouagadougou is obviously a very corrupt city.

That’s how the rest of the country views D.C. Washington is probably the richest city in America because the people who live there have the closest proximity to power. That seems obvious to most voters. It’s less obvious to us, because everyone here is so cheerful and familiar, and we’re too close to it. Chairman so-and-so’s son-in-law lobbies the committee? That doesn't seem corrupt. He’s such a good guy.

Carlson's lived there 20 years. He knows these people. We all do. They hate us. Truth , they hated Reagan too and have spent the last 28 years trying to cleanse the nation of him.

Never Trump is an attempt to hang on to power. Let them squawk. Teacher says every time a Washington pundit speaks on cable TV, a voter flips to Trump.

Available on Kindle on June 16 -- "Trump the Press: Don Surber's take on how the pundits blew the 2016 Republican race."

Remember this gem from September 24, 2010: "When facing a tsunami, what do you do? Pray, and tell yourself stories. I am not privy to the Democrats' private prayers, but I do hear the stories they're telling themselves. The new meme is that there's a civil war raging in the Republican Party. The Tea Party will wreck it from within and prove to be the Democrats' salvation." I read that as him saying that's what the Dems are saying, to convince themselves. Boy was that wrong; the GOPe did it.

Dr. Krauthammer is who he is. He never has and never will have vernacular sensibilities. He does not come from that kind of background (and neither do I, while we're at it). That he is who he is is not a problem provided he can appreciate people unlike himself or has a lively sense of what he does not know as well as what he does. As I read Krauthammer, people unlike him (e.g. Southern evangelicals) do not have a great deal of rent free space in his head. He's not hostile to them (for the most part) because his differences with them are not that important to him.

Re Washington: one thing you should remember is that the 'official Washington' of Congress and its staff, the political parties, the patronage appointees in the federal executive, the judges, the lawyers in the firms with a 'government relations' practice, the lobbyists, the diplomats, and the political journalists -- that Washington is a demographic segment that might (with families) make up 2% of the whole. The 'Federal Washington' of the civil service and the military might (along with family members and retirees) make up about 20% of the total. For the most part, Washington's like any other city of comparable size with a few qualifications: there is almost no manufacturing, the traffic is terrible, nominal incomes are higher, and real estate prices are higher. A four room condominium in an inner-ring suburb can set you back $400,000. Personal income per capita in greater Washington is just shy of what it is in the Bay Area, about 9% higher than it is in greater New York, about 27% higher than it is in greater Baltimore, and about 50% higher than it is in greater Omaha. It's an affluent town, but most people who live there would not be terribly out of place in a generic American city.

You've neglected one reason its a popular place to live: the climate is quite pleasant. Never gets all that cold in the winter and you only swelter for a few days in the summer.

About 2/3 of the workforce in greater Washington is in private sector employment. Another 12% or so are public employees of the sort you see anywhere: schoolteachers, police officers, road workers, &c. Most people in Washington are quite similar to other people in pursuing their livelihoods. You do have a mess of federal workers there and they are typically well-compensated (though a great deal of that is in the retirement benefits, not the real-time salaries). The real influentials are not very numerous.

Don, it doesn't matter if it's in Arlington or it's in Louisville. A four-room condo is a four room condo. There isn't some anomaly in the space-time continuum which makes a square foot any larger in Arlington or Alexandria than it is in Dayton.

You're neglecting my point. Personal income per capita is higher in Washington than most other loci (about 50% higher than national means). Greater Washington is not the most affluent metropolis in the country. The Bay Area complex is the most affluent. The characteristics of the real estate market mean that people with a given income level have to make do with smaller digs or allocate a larger share of their income to housing than they would if they lived in Allentown. Also, the piss and bother of commuting is a good deal more severe in greater Washington than it is elsewhere.

Case in point is a physician in circle who lives in Arlington, Va. He rents a modest 3 bedroom house that might be around 1,400 sq ft. The sum he spends on housing would be, in an ordinary city, characteristic of someone with a post-tax income twice national means. Well, he's a physician, so that's normal. However, the house he lives in is no more spacious than the suburban housing you find west of Rochester, which was ground zero for Kodak assembly line workers. It's no more spacious, but his rent is about 3x what the mortgage payments would be on that suburban house in Gates, NY. What he gets out of having that small and overpriced house is a short commute.

I was transferred to the DC area in late '99. I remember the town nobility were all a twitter, before there was Twitter, over the gauche internet "trash" who were taking over the charity and other boards. Not to mention, the Dulles corridor people were throwing around their money. The "story" controlled the Wash Po local columns.

You know, thinking about it, it wasn't long after this peak that we had the IT crash and many of those Dulles "trash" at AOL were bought out before collapsing or suddenly being found to have been fraudulent, what was that telecom and also that cable company?

The DC government nobility won't be denied their pretensions with other people's money.

"True, Christine O'Donnell's nomination in Delaware may cost the Republicans an otherwise safe seat (and possibly control of the Senate), and Sharron Angle in Nevada is running only neck-and-neck with an unpopular Harry Reid. On balance, however, the Tea Party contribution is a large net plus, with its support for such strong candidates as Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Joe Miller of Alaska, Mike Lee of Utah. Even Rand Paul, he of the shaky start in Kentucky, sports an eight-point lead. All this in addition to the significant Tea Party contribution to the tide that will carry dozens of Republicans into the House."

And his finish - this was Sept 24, 2010, before the election:

"Newt Gingrich had to work hard -- getting Republican candidates to sign the Contract with America -- to nationalize the election that swept Republicans to victory in 1994. A Democratic anti-Tea Party campaign would do that for the Republicans -- nationalize the election, gratis -- in 2010. As a very recent former president -- now preferred (Public Policy Polling, Sept. 1) in bellwether Ohio over the current one by 50 percent to 42 percent -- once said: Bring 'em on. "

This is a very pro-Tea Party piece. As noted above, his intro mocks the Dems who misread the situation.

Your anger makes you irrational. You seem to think as follows: Krauthammer didn't support the Tea Party and doesn't support Trump so therefore Trump is going to save us. That's illogical and a very bad bet.

Your reading comprehension seems a little weak today. You completely misinterpreted a clear statement by Krauthammer that means pretty much the opposite of what you claim. If you're going to criticize, at least try to pay attention.

Trump! does not want the things the Tea Party wanted. He represents the abandonment of the rule of law by 1/3rd of the GOP. I will write in Ted Cruz in November if I cannot vote for him on the regular ballot.

Like Carlson says, "Everyone beats up on Washington....Washington is probably the richest city in America because the people who live there have the closest proximity to power. That seems obvious to most voters."

No, Washington's not Imperial Rome, however much it might please political scientists specializing in international relations to manufacture analogies. We do not have some far flung portfolio of provinces occupied by restive foreigners. Since the end of the Cold War, between 70% and 87% of American troops have been billeted domestically. Loci where we've had a troop force in five digits include Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The entire Southern Command had 2,000 billets a few years back, 45% of the stationed at Guantanamo Bay. The entirety of Tropical and Southern Africa had about 5,000 billets.

I stopped paying much mind to the Krauthammer several years ago when he slandered Geert Wilders (the counterjihad HERO whose life is perpetually in danger from islamic supremacists and whose freedom keeps getting put in jeopardy because European dhimmies keep putting him on trial due to his honest assessment of the dangers presented by expansionist islam) as "fascist". This happened at about the same time that blubbering idiot Glen Beck also called Wilders a "fascist" (on Beck's Fox News show) despite having previously praised him in person as the hero for free speech that Wilders truly is when Beck had a show on HLN.